Poll

What do you think?

Are you 100% certain that the NASA Moon landings were genuine?
16 (66.7%)
Are you 100% certain that the NASA moon landings were faked?
8 (33.3%)

Total Members Voted: 23

Author Topic: Re: The Lunar Landings  (Read 56484 times)

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Offline Bri Roberts

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Re: The Lunar Landings
« on: August 25, 2012, 11:12:45 pm »
RIP Neil Armstrong.

Nice photograph, Ludo, but can you (or anyone else) please explain where the two sources of light are coming from.

Offline Ludo

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Re: Re: The Lunar Landings
« Reply #1 on: August 25, 2012, 11:22:26 pm »
RIP Neil Armstrong.

Nice photograph, Ludo, but can you (or anyone else) please explain where the two sources of light are coming from.

One is from the old Llandudno christmas lights and the other from here:


Reality checkpoint, Cambridge.
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Offline Fester

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Re: Re: The Lunar Landings
« Reply #2 on: August 26, 2012, 12:46:25 am »
Yes, one of the giants of the 20th Century has passed on.

However, I do not believe that anyone has ever landed on the moon.   (Sorry Neil)
Fester...
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Offline Merddin Emrys

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Re: Re: The Lunar Landings
« Reply #3 on: August 26, 2012, 06:49:06 am »
RIP Neil Armstrong.

Nice photograph, Ludo, but can you (or anyone else) please explain where the two sources of light are coming from.

Looks like an Olympic torch in the foreground!
A pigeon is for life not just Christmas

Offline Ian

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Re: Re: The Lunar Landings
« Reply #4 on: August 26, 2012, 08:42:57 am »
Quote
However, I do not believe that anyone has ever landed on the moon.

I assume you're joking?
Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.  ― Michel de Montaigne

Si hoc legere scis, nimis eruditionis habes.

Offline Yorkie

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Re: Re: The Lunar Landings
« Reply #5 on: August 26, 2012, 08:55:22 am »
Quote
However, I do not believe that anyone has ever landed on the moon.

I assume you're joking?

Many people have a similar opinion to Fester.   It's a trifle similar to the argument as to whether there is a God or Almighty Being.  Each to his own!    >>>
Wise men have something to say.
Fools have to say something.
Cicero

Offline DaveR

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Re: Re: The Lunar Landings
« Reply #6 on: August 26, 2012, 09:24:04 am »
Quote
However, I do not believe that anyone has ever landed on the moon.

I assume you're joking?
:laugh:  :laugh:  :laugh: I did ask him what all the millions of people around the world that watched Apollo 11 travelling to (and returning from)the Moon through telescopes were actually looking at....  :laugh:  :laugh:  :laugh:

Offline Ian

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Re: Re: The Lunar Landings
« Reply #7 on: August 26, 2012, 11:24:43 am »
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I did ask him what all the millions of people around the world that watched Apollo 11 travelling to (and returning from)the Moon through telescopes were actually looking at....  :laugh:  :laugh:  :laugh:

...or why it's possible to bounce a signal off the laser reflector left on the moon by the astronauts...   _))* _))*
Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.  ― Michel de Montaigne

Si hoc legere scis, nimis eruditionis habes.

Offline Fester

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Re: Re: The Lunar Landings
« Reply #8 on: August 26, 2012, 11:57:44 pm »
No Ian, sadly I'm not joking.

I have listened to many of the conspiracy theories regarding the moon landings.
I have laughed a few off, I have de-bunked many myself.
But I am left with sufficient doubts to conclude in my mind that the lunar landing in 1969, on balance, probably did not actually happen.
I am still open minded on the subject however.

Many more eminent people than myself have come forward with scientific evidence that it was impossible for it to have taken place.  I have listened to all sides, and I am 60/40 against at this point in my life.

Dave, you can scoff all you like, (and post as many laughing smileys as you like), but in 1969 people were only able to follow the rocket on telescope as far as the ionosphere.  Above that you could not track it due to the Earth's rotation and the (rather convenient) radio silence and blackout.
Fester...
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Offline DaveR

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Re: Re: The Lunar Landings
« Reply #9 on: August 27, 2012, 09:03:18 am »
I think you summed it up quite nicely:

"I have listened to many of the conspiracy theories regarding the moon landings."
 
If you want to believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden, you'll find reasons to believe in them.

http://www.thekeyboard.org.uk/Did%20we%20land%20on%20the%20Moon.htm

Dave, you can scoff all you like, (and post as many laughing smileys as you like), but in 1969 people were only able to follow the rocket on telescope as far as the ionosphere.  Above that you could not track it due to the Earth's rotation and the (rather convenient) radio silence and blackout.
So...Apollo 11 took off with the astronauts on board, went up into Space and returned to Earth several days later? What did they do for a few days before returning to earth...booked in at a invisible Travelodge maybe?

Offline Ian

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Re: Re: The Lunar Landings
« Reply #10 on: August 27, 2012, 09:23:29 am »
Quote
Dave, you can scoff all you like, (and post as many laughing smileys as you like), but in 1969 people were only able to follow the rocket on telescope as far as the ionosphere.  Above that you could not track it due to the Earth's rotation and the (rather convenient) radio silence and blackout.

That's not quite accurate, F;  the big telescopes around the world were able to track the approach to the moon (although the question is one of resolution: how big does an object have to be before a telescope can resolve it, that is, see it as more than just a dot? As an example, a person standing next to you is easy to see and easily identifiable. But from a mile away that human is far more difficult to see, and from ten miles away is just a dot, if that. The ability of a telescope to resolve an object is, as you’d expect, directly related to the size of the mirror or lens. There is a simple relationship between mirror size and resolving power: R = 11.6 / D, where R = the angular size of the object in arcseconds. An arcsecond is a measure of angular size - how big an object appears to be: if two objects are the same physical size, the one farther away will appear smaller, and have a smaller angular size. There are 3600 arcseconds to a degree, and to give you an idea of how small a measure this is, the Moon is about 0.5 degrees = 1800 arcseconds across.  D is the diameter of the mirror in centimeters. Hubble’s mirror is 2.4 meters = 240 centimeters across. Plugging that into the formula, we see that Hubble’s resolution is 11.6 / 240 = 0.05 arcseconds. That’s an incredibly small size; a human would have to be nearly 8000 kilometers (4900 miles) away to be 0.05 arcseconds in size,), and the radio silence you mention was only induced by the plasma generation during the few minutes of re-entry.  Additionally, since the late 2000s, high-definition photos taken by the LROC spacecraft of the Apollo landing sites have captured the lander modules and the tracks left by the astronauts. In 2012, images were released showing the Apollo flags still standing on the Moon.

Some have argued that one of the main motives of conspiracists is making money from pseudoscience. In November 2002, actor Tom Hanks, who starred in the movie Apollo 13 and produced the documentary From the Earth to the Moon, was asked what he thought of the conspiracy theories. He replied: "We live in a society where there is no law [against] making money in the promulgation of ignorance or, in some cases, stupidity".

It can also be argued that the conspiracy theories are impossible because of their size and complexity. More than 400,000 people worked on the Apollo project for nearly ten years, a dozen men who walked on the Moon returned to Earth to recount their experiences, plus 6 others who flew with them as Command Module Pilots as direct witnesses, and another 9 astronauts who orbited the moon (which proves, at least, that the Saturn-V was capable of reaching the moon, a feat which some hoax theorists claim wasn't possible.) Hundreds of thousands of people—including astronauts, scientists, engineers, technicians, and skilled laborers—would have had to keep the secret. It can thus be argued that it would have been much easier to really land on the Moon than to generate such a huge conspiracy to fake the landings,  Finally, the placing of the highly directional laser reflector units, which allows us to bounce relatively low powered lasers onto the moon and time their return to Earth (as demonstrated on the Big Bang Theory) suggests that either an alien race trying to be helpful placed them there or we actually landed on the moon.

However, the veritable Tsunami of evidence supporting the moon theories apparently means little to the deniers (who, curiously, are often the first to suggest that aliens visit us on a regular basis) so I'll leave the last word to Discover magazine:

"Once you stick your fingers in your ears and start saying "LALALALALA I can’t hear you" all bets are off, and no amount of evidence will help. The only thing to do is to go back.

And that’s just what we’re doing. Not to prove to Apollo deniers anything, of course. They can sit here back on Earth and pretend it’s flat if they want. But the rest of us will look up, look out… and shoot the Moon."
Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.  ― Michel de Montaigne

Si hoc legere scis, nimis eruditionis habes.

Offline Bri Roberts

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Re: Re: The Lunar Landings
« Reply #11 on: August 27, 2012, 09:57:08 am »
DaveR and Ian, if you are convinced Apollo 11 landed on the moon in July 1969, can you please explain the 2 x sources of light in Ludo's photograph?

Maybe one of you can also please explain why there are no stars in the sky?

Offline Ian

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Re: Re: The Lunar Landings
« Reply #12 on: August 27, 2012, 10:35:21 am »
Quote
DaveR and Ian, if you are convinced Apollo 11 landed on the moon in July 1969, can you please explain the 2 x sources of light in Ludo's photograph?

Maybe one of you can also please explain why there are no stars in the sky?

To deal with the first point, Bri, there are numerous sources of light in any Apollo mission shot.  The lunar surface itself, for instance, is highly reflective, as you can tell on any clear night with a full moon. The rocks themselves are bleached and thus reflect light and scatter it.  Additionally, the suits worn by the astronauts were themselves highly reflective, partly to deal with the issues of radiation, and partly to do with temperature control.  Finally, the landers were swathed in reflective gold and silver foils, all of which combined to cause a lot of light sources from all angles in any lunar shots.

On the second point, all the manned landings happened during the lunar daytime. Thus, the stars were outshone by the sun and by sunlight reflected off the moon's surface. The astronauts' eyes were adapted to the sunlit landscape around them so that they could not see the relatively faint stars. Likewise, cameras were set for daylight exposure and could not detect the stars. Camera settings can turn a well-lit background into ink-black when the foreground object is brightly lit, forcing the camera to increase shutter speed in order not to have the foreground light completely wash out the image. A demonstration of this effect is here. The effect is similar to not being able to see stars from a brightly lit car park at night—the stars only become visible when the lights are turned off. The astronauts could see stars with the naked eye only when they were in the shadow of the Moon.

        An ultraviolet telescope was taken to the lunar surface on Apollo 16 and operated in the shadow of the lunar module. It captured pictures of Earth and of many stars, some of which are dim in visible light but bright in the ultraviolet. These observations were later matched with observations taken by orbiting ultraviolet telescopes. Furthermore, the positions of those stars with respect to Earth are correct for the time and location of the Apollo 16 photographs.

Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.  ― Michel de Montaigne

Si hoc legere scis, nimis eruditionis habes.

Offline Ian

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Re: Re: The Lunar Landings
« Reply #13 on: August 27, 2012, 10:40:54 am »
In 2009, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was launched and now orbits the moon.  It's equipped with extremely high resolution cameras, and has been sending detailed images of the moon for the past two and half years. Here's a few...

(I've included one shot during the actual manned mission, so you can compare the rover tracks
Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.  ― Michel de Montaigne

Si hoc legere scis, nimis eruditionis habes.

Offline Ian

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Re: Re: The Lunar Landings
« Reply #14 on: August 27, 2012, 10:43:47 am »
More...
Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.  ― Michel de Montaigne

Si hoc legere scis, nimis eruditionis habes.